The Bainbridge Island community lost when Kitsap County Superior Court decided that citizen groups, such as Friends of Bainbridge Island, do not have standing to appeal the City Council’s decision to give a street right-of-way along State Route 305 to a private developer.

The judge decided that we don’t have sufficient legal “interest”; only adjoining land owners can appeal. But in this case, the only adjoining land owners are the developer who asked the city for the ROW land and the city that gave it to them!

We believe the court was wrong in its decision: citizens do have an interest when the city gives a street right-of-way adjacent to one of our busiest intersections to a developer for construction of private buildings.

As we reviewed the Island Gateway proposal, we realized that 305 narrows quite a bit just before the Winslow Way intersection, with the distance from the centerline dropping from 90 feet to 52 feet.

If we used the land in the city ROW, the highway could be wider nearly all the way to Winslow Way.

We believe there are many uses for this particular street ROW that would benefit all Island citizens more than the large structure that will be placed in it.

The city’s choice fails to consider future needs, such as:

1) Creation of a turn lane from 305 to Winslow Way;

2) Addition of a transit-only lane as planned by Kitsap County Transit;

3) Creation of a bike lane wide enough to isolate bikes from cars on the highway;

4) Providing a pedestrian gateway to Bainbridge Island and safer access to Winslow for pedestrians;

5) Making the Sound-to-Olympics Trail a visible asset at the island’s gateway.

The city also could have made access to the Unocal site – a straight shot across Winslow Way from 305 – to ease access to proposed ferry-holding lanes.

Is our government arbitrary and capricious?

The Kitsap County Superior Court ruled that the council decision to vacate the street ROW would be upheld unless it was arbitrary and capricious.

While that may be an appropriate standard for the Superior Court review, we believe that we should be able to expect much more from our council and city staff.

We should be able to expect decisions that are made after comprehensive, open and thoughtful review. City staff and council did not meet that standard when it decided to vacate the street ROW.

When a city wants to vacate a street right-of-way, staff is supposed to prepare a report for the council that evaluates all the criteria the council must consider in making the decision.

Because vacating streets is generally against public policy, the law is intended to ensure that the street vacation is the best choice for the public as a whole.

City staff did not prepare the report (as stated by a staff member at the council meeting before its vote). City staff did not seek comments or information from local, regional or state agencies that are responsible for traffic planning and would have had an interest in the street ROW.

Kitsap Transit was not informed or asked to comment on the vacation, and the only comments from the state Department of Transportation and WSF are contained in a short e-mail as an apparent response to a representative of Island Gateway.

The director of city planning and development had lots of time to seek comments from all these agencies: drawings showed the placement of the proposed art museum in the ROW at the very first design review meetings.

And we can infer from this that the developer was confident he would be given the ROW.

The planning director allowed the entire city review process, including the director’s approval of the project, to be completed before the council was presented with the ROW issue, even though the project might have been modified substantially if the council hadn’t given its approval.

Certainly the director had time to prepare a report for council, but the council was never given basic information about the street vacation.

Because the council vote occurred only at the end of the project approval, the issue became highly politicized, even though the street vacation had no affect on the KiDiMu building and need not have eliminated the art museum building.

At the very least, the city’s approach created the appearance that the decision was pre-determined and that the public’s interests were never carefully considered.

We can and should expect a higher standard of performance from city staff and council.

Although we have focused solely on the outcome and impact of the ROW litigation, the Island Gateway project raises many other issues with city staff process, its interpretation of environmental law, and the lack of oversight of staff decisions.

Annette Wilson Skinner and Charles Schmid are members of the Friends of Bainbridge Island, a nonprofit that filed a lawsuit against the city and Island Gateway regarding the street vacation.